Our customers benefit from high quality electroplating. Your master lacquers are silvered then plated in a tin bath and become the A & B side stampers we affix to our presses. We recommend two step (making one mother) or three step (making 2 mothers and storing one for future pressings). One set of stampers can press about 1000 records before they start to wear out. Master lacquers are destroyed in the plating process, so if you think you will be pressing more than 1000 or perhaps pressing color down the road, you may want to go for 3 step to save yourself the expense of having to have your album recut and replated at a later date. Learn more about plating here.
Each project scheduled to run on one of our presses requires time and physical manipulation of our presses to get your project ready to be pressed. Each project set up is expertly laid out by one of our press technicians. Standard setup involves affixing the stampers, getting vinyl pellets formed into the biscuits + labels which then are placed inside the press. It also includes basic machine prep pre-pressing and clean up post-pressing. Due to the manufacturing process, sometimes there may be trace colors from other runs within a pressing run. If you'd like a 100% solid color devoid of transition colors, please contact us to talk about special custom setup considerations; additional charges may apply.
Test presses are crucial. It’s your final opportunity to evaluate how your record pressing will sound prior to the larger production run. Tests are run in very small batches and require time and set up of a machine for just 5 tests presses. As you know, the vinyl format has it’s nuances and idiosyncrasies, but other audio or physical anomalies might be detected during test press evaluation. If you are cutting costs, this isn’t the place to do it.
Two thousand psi at 300 degrees is required to press a vinyl biscuit into a vinyl record. It is cooled, trimmed of excess, then safely stored for final curing. Your project doesn’t leave our hands without quality proofing of each project run. 5-10 pressings are routinely randomly pulled for careful visual and audio inspection by a skilled and experienced vinyl technician.
140g black vinyl is our standard weight for 12" // 40g black vinyl is our standard weight for 7"
Color Vinyl: stock & custom colors are available
